


Heart of Void

by eldvarpa



Series: Fëanorians beyond the First Age (AUs) [21]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Deviates From Canon, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Implied Suicide Attempt, Not Really Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23892655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldvarpa/pseuds/eldvarpa
Summary: Fëanor watches over his sons from the Void. His sons are not happy with just that.
Relationships: Fëanor & Sons of Fëanor
Series: Fëanorians beyond the First Age (AUs) [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1066016
Comments: 13
Kudos: 73





	Heart of Void

The moment Celegorm realised he was about to die, reality shifted around him. 

The torches in the ravaged halls of Menegroth cast a dark red light and all colour was sucked away from the objects and the people around him. Movements slowed down, sounds were muffled, and all of a sudden his father was standing in front of him.

Celegorm could only gasp.

Fëanor didn't look any less surprised than him, at first, but then his face brightened and he reached out to him.

“Turcafinwë,” he said, his voice soft but clear, a diamond against the garbled noises around them. “Oh how I've missed you.”

Fëanor hugged him.

Still too bewildered to say anything, Celegorm hugged him back.

And then the sword that had been aimed at him pierced his father, once, slowly, just above where Celegorm's arms were circled around him. Excruciatingly slowly it was pulled out and plunged in again. Fëanor went tense in his arms, gurgled a little. 

Celegorm remembered his father's many wounds, and the way he held on until his sons were far enough from Angband, and safe, the long excruciating agony ending in fire.

He pulled back to look at his father. 

“It will be fine,” Fëanor wheezed.

It wasn't fine, and it wasn't going to be, because Celegorm had to _feel_ his father die again, while ghosts of people fell like leaves all around him, noiselessly. When Fëanor finally died, the halls of Menegroth disappeared and Celegorm found himself standing on the edge of a black cliff under a red sky. 

Behind him the dark was so thick it looked like a thing that breathed and could creak into motion and crash down on him at any moment. 

The red light stretched into the boundless horizon in front of him. The water at the bottom of the cliff was tinted with it. 

Through the red hue, Celegorm watched his father die in Curufin's place just as he had died for him, except that it all seemed to last for hours. 

Curufin joined him, and together they waited and waited and waited for the battle to be over, but an eternity went by and it was wrong because they had already practically won and Menegroth could ambush them but not survive. 

In the end Fëanor had to take Caranthir's place too and when it was over, they were both there too, on the cliff.

“Is this the Void?” Celegorm asked. 

Fëanor nodded briskly. “Let's go,” he said and started walking.

They all followed him and vied to hold his hands, just like when they were children. Just like when they were children Fëanor tried to make sure to give all three of them the attention they craved.

They walked and walked, always skirting the edge of the cliff. They didn't talk all that much. Being together was enough. The scenery hadn't changed one bit when Fëanor suddenly stopped but he looked down at the water and said, “this is the spot.”

“For what?” Caranthir asked, furrowing his brow under his stained, dented helmet.

“For you to go back.”

“Go back where?” Caranthir asked again, sounding increasingly wary. 

Fëanor smiled. He pulled Caranthir's hand to his lips and kissed it before letting it go. “To Arda, where you belong.”

“You're coming too, right?” Celegorm said.

Fëanor kept smiling. Only his eyes gave away a certain sadness. “I'm dead, remember? I don't have a body to live in. But you never died, so you still have a place in the world.”

Celegorm became keenly aware of his body. Of his breathing, of the way his throat tightened and his chest that had never been pierced hurt under layers of metal and leather. “And what will you do?”

“I'm bound to this place.”

“You'll just stay here, alone?” Curufin said. 

“I don't mind.” Fëanor turned to him. He shook away a bit of dirt that was stuck to his shoulder guard. “I will wait, for as long as it takes, until we can be reunited. And I will watch over you.”

“But we haven't fulfilled our Oath,” Curufin protested. “ _May the Everlasting Dark take us_ ,” he chanted, as if he wished the words to become true there and then.

Fëanor held a finger to his lips. “I didn't let the everlasting darkness take you. I won't let it. You did all you could. Consider your Oath fulfilled.”

“But Father–” Curufin started to protest again. 

This time, Fëanor hugged him.

“Be happy, little one,” he said. “Look for Tyelperinquar and tell him that I love him, okay?”

Fëanor pulled back and was smiling down at him and Curufin was too in awe - too mesmerised - to do anything, because all he wanted was right there in front of him and he couldn't believe that he was about to lose it.

Fëanor let go of him and pushed him off the cliff.

“Curvo!” Caranthir screamed.

Both he and Celegorm watched Curufin's fall.

There was a splash, a sprinkle of foam and nothing else, but it was enough of a distraction for Fëanor to push Caranthir off the cliff too. 

Celegorm was ready. He grabbed his father before his father could touch him. “You can't do this.”

“Turco, there's nothing for you here.”

“There's you,” Celegorm tried to get away from the cliff, frantically. “I'm not going.” 

Celegorm however learnt that an unhoused fëa – an unfettered fëa – had a definite advantage in the Void. Back when they were both alive, Fëanor could never have pushed him back like he did, until his feet scraped against the very brink of the cliff. Celegorm fought to the very end. Fëanor shook his arms off, and tipped him over the edge, but Celegorm managed to grab him and cling to him just as he slipped and fell.

He woke up on a grassy cliff, with the smell of the sea in his nostrils and a breeze whispering over his face. When he opened his eyes and saw the blue of the sky he began to cry. His weeping soon turned to sobbing. He balled his hands up and squeezed his eyes shut again, his body heaving violently.

Curufin scooted over to him. “Turco, come on.”

Caranthir was sitting behind Curufin, with one hand dangling lifelessly between his legs and the other shielding his eyes. 

“I tried to hold on to him,” Celegorm managed to say between his sobs. “What if I've hurt him?”

“I'm sure not.” Calmly, Curufin started unlacing the fastenings of his shoulder guards. “Father is just a fëa.”

Celegorm shook his armour off and scooted closer to his brother. He buried his face in Curufin's thigh and cried. 

Curufin caressed his head and beckoned Caranthir close too.

The twins showed up years later, on a dull evening like all the other evenings the brothers spent on the cliff, searching, wondering, surviving. 

Celegorm was surprised for a moment only because they seemed to have sprung out of the bonfire where he had just roasted his and Curufin's dinner. 

Amrod and Amras walked around the bonfire and sat down next to them.

Caranthir, who had no appetite, and was trying his best to concentrate on some spinning – trying to focus on the fact that his brothers needed his threads and cloth more than ever before – only had to take one good look at them, at their bloodied armour and dazed expressions. 

“How could he push the both of you off that damn cliff?” he asked.

“He...” Amrod began, hesitated, until Amras finished for him, “he just had push one of us.”

Caranthir didn't ask which one of them had slipped first. “Did he try to feed all that drivel about the Oath being fulfilled to you too?” 

“Yes,” Amras confirmed, his lips twisting into a grimace. “I told him I couldn't give less of a fuck about the Oath.”

“I should have told him that too, when he said the same thing to us,” Celegorm huffed, slamming his fist against the grass. 

“To achieve what, Turco?” Caranthir scoffed, pulling so hard on the newly spun thread it almost snapped. “The fucking gall he has, to get rid of you too after you told him that. But he was thinking about our happiness! Happiness my ass.”

“Moryo.” Curufin spoke in a tone that said he wanted Caranthir to stop. Celegorm and he had heard Caranthir go over the same complaints a thousand times over. “Where did you die?” he asked the twins, over the sound of Caranthir aggressively flicking his spindle. 

“At the delta of the river Sirion, where the survivors from Doriath and Gondolin built a fortress.”

“Gondolin?” Celegorm echoed.

Amras gave the most uncaring shrug. “It fell.”

“How did you die?” Curufin went on.

Amras and Amrod looked at each other, into each other.

Amrod started taking his twins' armour off while Amras replied.

“They were shooting arrows at us. Pityo was trying to shield me and before we knew it Father was standing there and shielded him and died, and then they were both gone, just like that,” he said. He looked straight into his twin's eyes as he added, “I couldn't stay, could I?”

Amrod gave him a reassuring hug. “How can he do that? Die instead of us, I mean.”

“I have a couple of ideas,” Curufin said, but didn't elaborate. “When did the battle happen?”

“It was the third day of the third month of spring.”

Curufin steadied his voice and spoke very slowly. “It is still the third day of the third month of spring.”

“Impossible,” Amras nearly shouted.

Amrod echoed him, not any less taken aback. “We spent days with Father, I could swear it.”

“I know, it's hard to believe, but that's how it is. Time passes more slowly in the Void. Or, perhaps, there is no time at all in the Void.”

Curufin's words were met with silence. 

Amras looked at his hands, where his father had touched him and his warmth seemed to linger. He curled them up. He shut his eyes, but there was the crackling of the bonfire, so alive so warm.

“So these past few centuries will have felt like literally forever to Father?”

“Probably, yes,” Curufin said.

Caranthir couldn't take it. “Fucking great!” He hurled his spindle away, sprang to his feet and stumbled, his vision blurred. Stumbling, he stormed off towards the forest that stretched halfway down the cliff.

Curufin bowed his head and stared at the grass.

Celegorm heaped what was left of the meat and fish on their only wooden plate, and handed it to the twins. “I'll bring him back,” he said, standing up with a big brother's resolve. 

Amras and Amrod finished taking off their armour and scooted over to Curufin, who eagerly accepted their kisses and hugs and let Amrod pull him closer to sit against his chest. 

“Moryo hasn't been doing well,” he said. “He can't accept that we met father only to lose him immediately all over again. He's tried killing himself a few times. We've had to stop him, but sometimes I think that's only hurting him more.”

“No, Curvo, that's most definitely not,” Amrod gently said.

“Father would have to die again in his place for them to meet at any rate.” Amras put in. “I personally have had enough of watching Father die.”

Curufin nodded.

“Would you fill us in on all the details while we wait?”

They waited and waited, but Maglor and Maedhros didn't show up. 

A Silmaril appeared in the sky instead. 

It was far enough – well out of their reach – but they recognised it among the very stars. 

It was brighter than any star.

It wasn't hard to guess that the Valar must have put it there, which raised all manner of questions. If the Valar had finally decided to join the war. What had been of Morgoth. What happened to their brothers.

So they decided to make their way back west and see with their own eyes. The journey took long, much longer than they had anticipated. Halfway through they came to the realisation that their father had dropped them out of the Void in the region of Middle-Earth farthest from Beleriand, at which point Caranthir added a few specific insults directed at their father to his repertoire of cursing aimed at the Valar. 

When they finally reached the Blue Mountains, the few Dwarves who still lived there told them that Beleriand was almost entirely gone, sunk into the sea, that Morgoth had been vanquished by a host from beyond the sea, and that many tales were told about their brothers but no-one knew for sure what their fate had been. 

“If Nelyo and Cáno somehow got to stay with Father, I swear I'm going to –”

“Moryo, please.” Curufin grabbed Caranthir's arm, trying to pull him into a hug. 

Caranthir faltered, looked down and dragged his nails against the inside of his hands, which were already covered in scratches. “I'm sorry.” 

Curufin managed to get him to turn and hug him. Caranthir hugged him back, but it was weak. After they reached the west, all the hugging in the world didn't seem to do much for his mood. It didn't help that most of what was left of Beleriand used to be Thargelion, and Caranthir was still very fond of the place. 

Celegorm started asking every living creature they met about Maedhros and Maglor. Unsurprisingly, it was a raven who agreed to help them find them.

The raven took them to a meadow, and specifically towards two indistinct black shapes that broke the green of the tall grass and were definitely not Maedhros and Maglor.

Before the brothers had a chance to be puzzled, one of the two shapes raised her feline head. Her ears twitched as she looked up.

“Litsë?” Amras cried out, disbelieving. 

A big tortie cat – a Valinorean tortie cat – stood and stretched and raised one paw towards him and his twin. Amras and Amrod ran towards her and crouched down next to her. Litsë put her paws on Amras's shoulder, nuzzling and licking his face while Amrod petted her.

Disturbed by the vibrations, the other black shape unwound into motion too, and slithered noiselessly towards a familiar heat. She climbed his leg and coiled around his chest, up and up and up until her neck circled his and she could face him. Her forked tongue smelled him.

“Yes, it's me, Nárhatë,” Curufin said.

Caranthir tried to be patient, at first. He was all too painfully aware of the value of such a reunion. But when Amrod and Amras kept petting and cooing Litsë, and Celegorm started reminiscing with Nárhatë on how their father had nearly fainted when Celegorm dropped her as a young snake into Curufin's baby bed so that they could grow together, he could not stand it. 

“I'm happy for all of you, but where are Maglor and Maedhros?” he asked, exasperation threaded into his every word.

Litsë led the way towards the sea and north. 

Maglor stood where the sea-water licked at his feet, facing the horizon. He didn't hear them approach. Celegorm, to be fair, crept up to him so stealthily only the most keen-eared animals would have been able to perceive him. Celegorm realised too, when he was close enough, that Maglor was singing under his breath. 

Celegorm circled him with his arms pulled him back into a hug. 

“Brother,” he called before burying his face in Maglor's neck.

Maglor stopped breathing for a few moments then clicked his tongue. “Great, I'm hallucinating now,” he said, gruffly, to himself. “When did I last eat? Sometime yesterday, or maybe it was two days ago?”

“No hallucination, brother.”

Celegorm hugged him tighter and started kissing his exposed skin.

Maglor bit the inside of his mouth until he could taste blood. That usually helped him ground himself into his own body, when his mind wanted to take him away. This time it didn't dispel the very solid warmth of Celegorm's chest and arms. He allowed his lungs to fill again, which made it utterly impossible to deny that Celegorm was indeed real.

“Well, I don't think a hallucination could conjure your smell so accurately...so revoltingly. You stink.”

“It's not like you smell nice, you know. You look like shit, too.”

“Why, thanks,” Maglor said, and found himself grinning. 

Celegorm lifted him, holding him so very tight, and spun them around so Maglor could see their brothers. 

“Where is Nelyo?” 

Maglor grabbed on to Celegorm's arms with his free hand. The Silmaril shone in the other, like a slap in the face. “He is dead.”

Caranthir's lips trembled. “What did I tell you? He must be with Father!”

Curufin shook his head. “Moryo, he might be out on the other side of Middle-Earth and completely lost.”

Caranthir's eyes went to the Silmaril. “Does Nelyo have one too?” he said, pointing at the gem with an accusing finger. 

“Yes, he –” Maglor wet his lips. “...he committed suicide, holding it.”

In the blink of an eye, Caranthir flung himself at Maglor, but Curufin got in the way and the twins managed to catch him before he could take two steps.

“Let me go,” he screamed, thrashing, but the twins held his arms fast and he couldn't focus enough to free himself. “Let me have it.” 

“Moryo, please, calm down,” Curufin pleaded.

“If Nelyo did it I can do it too.”

“But Nelyo had no idea! What if you kill yourself and end up somewhere else completely this time?”

“At least I'll know I'm completely hopeless! At least I can just let go.”

“And what about us? What about me, brother, if I lose you?”

“Like it would make any difference–”

Curufin slapped him. “Moryo, please, don't do this to me.” He cupped Caranthir's face in his hands, and waited until Caranthir met his gaze. “I will try to find a way to meet Father again, I swear, Moryo, I swear, so stay with me.”

Caranthir couldn't stand to have half of his father pleading so lovingly with him, while the other half was lost to him. He flopped down between the twins, who followed him down. He clung to Amras's chest and cried. Amrod and Curufin both tried to comfort him.

“Can you do something to help him?” Celegorm asked Maglor.

“I don't even know what's going on! What's all this about joining Father? Where is Father?”

“Not in Mandos. He's in the Void. Or I guess...some place that could be the Void. I doubt even he knows for sure.” Celegorm paused and breathed in the scent of Maglor's hair, foul as it was. He was glad to have someone to look up to again. He was immensely relieved not to be the eldest any longer. “To make a long story short, no-one of us actually died. Father died in our place and took us with him to this Void, then kicked us out of there again.”

“How on earth –”

“Curvo thinks maybe the imminence of death brings the Void closer because that is where we should go too, by the Oath. Then there's the proximity of the Silmaril. There was always a Silmaril nearby when we should have died. That's why Moryo is so sure Nelyo has been able to join Father.”

Maglor wrapped his fingers tighter around his own Silmaril. It pulsated in response, as always, in time with his own heart. “And...stay with him?”

Celegorm shrugged. “Who knows what a Silmaril might do in the Void.”

Fëanor pushed Maedhros off the cliff again and, again, Maedhros stood behind him as if he had not fallen at all.

“I hope you'll grow tired of trying to drown me sooner or later. I'm growing quite bored,” Maedhros said with as serious a face as he could conjure, but there was no trace of boredom in his voice. 

Just being with his father, arguing with him, brought him back to a time centuries before, to the days before his father had left Formenos when their life had not yet swung off course. 

Fëanor turned, fists clenched. “Nelyo, please, you must leave.”

“Why?”

Fëanor walked up to him, leant his head back to properly face him. “You aren't dead, you have your own life to live out in the world.”

“And why would I want that?”

“Because that's how it should be.”

“Because the Valar would say so?” Maedhros taunted, and this time smirked. “Or maybe all the wise fools who stayed in Valinor? No, Father, I want to stay here, and I will.”

Fëanor sighed and looked at the Silmaril, his eighth-best creation. The Silmaril had to be the reason why Maedhros didn't slip out of the Void, like his brothers had. He made to bend towards it, but Maedhros lifted his claw-hand out of the way.

“This is mine now,” Maedhros said, firmly. “I fought long and hard to reclaim it, and I will keep it.” He bent the claw against his chest, cradling it with his good hand. “Besides, I don't think you can even imagine half of the tricks Curvo put into this prosthetic. He's very clever, your adoring baby boy. ”

“Don't you want to meet him again? Share the Silmaril with him?”

“We both will, one day.”

Fëanor looked at Maedhros's face again, the face he knew and loved, and all the new scars he wanted to commit to memory, and love, like everything else that was his son. The red sky made Maedhros's hair burn even brighter. 

“Nelyo, please, forget the Oath –”

“Yeah, forget the stupid Oath. You really think I was afraid of the Everlasting Dark, the Void, whatever this is? I've never cared about any of that. Hell, Everlasting Dark sounded tempting at times. But I kept going, for you. I did all I did because I didn't want some random piece of shit to keep your treasure, our treasure. I even chose to die with it, to be sure no-one but me would ever lay a hand on it again, and you had to go and die in my place.”

“Fine, let's not mention the Oath ever again,” Fëanor said, sounding just a little bit angrier. “I wanted to regain the Silmarils and defeat Morgoth so that we could settle somewhere safe and be happy, and free. You can still have that. I want you and your brothers to have that.”

“You...I can't believe you. I've just watched you burn to death a second time, for me, and you keep asking me to leave you here. Do you realise how cruel that is? Do you realise how cruel you've been to my brothers?”

“I wasn't,” Fëanor shot back. “Nelyo, you might not have much of me, even if you stay here.”

Maedhros frowned.

Fëanor brought a hand to his mouth. It came away coated in a black substance, something thick, as blood, something that shouldn't have been part of a fëa. It slid between Fëanor's fingers, slowly.

Maedhros watched as it slowly dripped down. “This is from there?” he asked, nodding towards the mass of darkness at his left. 

“Yes,” Fëanor confirmed. “Sometimes I go to talk to it. Sometimes I scream at it. Perhaps I've made another enemy.”

Maedhros considered. The darkness seemed to be pulsating – one giant heart, lying in wait. 

“It need not be something _evil_ though.” 

“But we cannot say for sure.”

Maedhros reached out with his good hand and lay it over his father's hand. He squeezed before Fëanor had a chance to step away. The black substance spread all over his palm. “I knew Beleriand was dangerous and left anyway.” He gripped his father's hand even tighter, adding, “I really hope you won't try to tell me that I don't know about suffering.”

Fëanor squeezed Maedhros's hand back with all the strength of a fëa. “I'm sorry, I tried to free you–”

Maedhros waved the Silmaril around. “That was not your fault, it was just the number one most stupid thing I've done in my whole life. Anyway, come on, let me meet this darkness of yours.”

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus quick drabble how this might continue (would have needed a whole other fic):
> 
> “Are you ready, Father?”
> 
> Maedhros stood on the edge of the cliff, ready to go back, with his father. 
> 
> Fëanor had helped him wear his now-ancient armour again before going to sleep inside him to gather up all of his strength.
> 
> They had very soon come to the conclusion that the only way for Fëanor to leave the Void was to be housed in a body, and Maedhros's body was the only body around. 
> 
> So they had tried and found a way to allow their fëar to be housed together, and combined the best of light and dark in the process.
> 
> Fëanor now stirred. 
> 
> Maedhros loved to feel his father's life writhe and seethe and give off sparks inside him.
> 
> Fëanor slipped out of his back and coiled around him, a pair of black arms and a veiled head leaning in to hug him from the outside. 
> 
> “We can't let Sauron wait much longer. He may think we were not serious when we threatened to destroy him,” Maedhros said. There were many things he wanted to try, that the best of light and the best of dark combined could accomplish. He was sure Sauron would be down for a little experimenting. “The others too have been waiting for long enough. Moryo is going to really kill me if I keep you all to myself.”
> 
> Fëanor gave him a kiss and tucked himself back inside Maedhros's chest. 
> 
> Maedhros smiled, and jumped.


End file.
